


Our Father Who Arte in Heaven

by dickjokesanddoilies



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Bobby Singer Father of the Year, Cas is a Bad Bitch, Fix-It, John Winchester Being an Asshole, M/M, Multi, Post-Finale
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-24
Updated: 2021-01-24
Packaged: 2021-03-16 19:55:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,358
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28962033
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dickjokesanddoilies/pseuds/dickjokesanddoilies
Summary: The fact that chapter one was finished on Dean’s birthday is just a happy accident really. I wrote this because I just think Cas can, would, and should get to beat John Winchester’s ass all over the kingdoms of Heaven.
Relationships: Castiel/Dean Winchester
Comments: 7
Kudos: 52





	1. Chapter 1

Bobby took in the way Castiel’s body slumped into his chair, the lines of bone-deep weary carved into the younger man’s face that served to make him seem far older than he was (or, as ancient as his actual being?) and was struck by something. Heaven’s most rebellious soldier was the only thing allowed to appear imperfect; the bags beneath his bloodshot eyes were purpled grotesquely and his unwashed hair lay across his forehead in limp, lank strands. The urge to order a centuries old celestial force to take a damn hot shower was almost overwhelming. 

His eyes danced over the broken doll that was his friend with almost perverse delight. He’d felt such a fatigue with the undisturbed  _ perfection  _ of everything in Heaven that seeing that the back of his kitchen chair was poking somewhat into Cas’s back filled him with indescribable relief. It was sheer, frothing madness to reminisce about accidentally cutting while shaving or wiping away fingerprint smudges from his windows, and yet this is what a never-ending eternity had done to him. In a moment of full-fledged, all-consuming insanity, Bobby almost leaned forward to smell him, to smell something unpleasant instead of the always crisp and refreshing air that filled his always-perfectly temperate cabin. Instead of scarring the poor creature and potentially sending him flapping away forever, Bobby reigned every instinct and took a measured sip of his bourbon, which had appeared before Bobby's even thought about it. 

“So what is it that’s troubling ya, boy?” 

Castiel’s blue eyes fluttered open with a start as if he’d forgotten Bobby was even there, and a pinched little wrinkle formed in between his eyebrows, pale mouth falling open on an argument. Possibly he took umption with being referred to as a ‘boy’ by a being who’d only lived a fraction of the time Castiel had, but Bobby didn’t give a rat’s ass. Castiel would always be cemented in his mind as one of Bobby’s boys, centuries of damn observing be damned. Something akin to that must’ve registered to the angel, because the bemused slash of his mouth turned into a smile that was soft and very-nearly undetectable if you weren’t familiar with his face. The sweet little microexpression made Bobby want to pat the tired bastard heartily on the back, but he recalled that on Earth Cas had never been a very touchy-feely sort, and Bobby doubted it would be appreciated. Even if it was tempting to feel fabric beneath his fingers that was scratchy and rough and not butter-soft. 

“Well? C’mon, I might be dead but I ain’t braindead. There’s only one reason one of you boys come to me, and that’s because yer all cheap bastards who won’t pay for therapy.” 

Bobby cajoled the brooding angel and grinned as Cas’s cheek flushed with sheepish acknowledgement as what Bobby had said finally registered. Seeing guilt slipping into those deep, dark eyes nearly had Bobby tripping to reassure the kid and tell him that he’d never minded being that for any of his family. It was, in fact, the very thing about being on Earth that he missed the most. As it was, he left the silence hanging, in the hopes that eventually Cas would break down and just spill some of that sadness  _ out _ . 

His mourning was a tangible weight that was weighing every part of Castiel down visibly: his shoulders, his red-looking eyelids, even his clothing seemed to hang limply along his form almost as though perpetually damp. Being touch-starved and removed from the details of how flawed reality was, Bobby wanted to brush the greasy strands off of that ever-furrowed brow of his son’s, make him a cup of tea, and try and coax him into a nap as if he were an  _ actual  _ child. No sooner had the notion flitted through his mind before a steaming mug had appeared on the lip of the table where Cas was sitting, and Bobby cursed internally as blue eyes met his. The two stared for a long minute, Bobby overcome with mortification and Cas with his head tilted just so in the exact way Bobby could replay in nearly all of his memories of the angel when he was alive. When they both were? 

He waited bracingly for anger to show on that waxy-looking face, but instead of a thunderous frown, Cas’s face bloomed into something gentle and open as he broke the gaze to peer into the red mug that Bobby reckoned was from his grandmama’s old house. Wrapping shaking hands around the heated porcelain, his voice rumbled even more than usual from disuse as Castiel finally spoke:

“Thank you.” 

Naked gratitude bled into the simple phrase, some of the deepest wrinkles in the poor kid’s (adults? Heavenly body’s?) face smoothing out. As they both continued taking slow pulls of their respective drinks, Bobby watched as the tension eked out of Castiel incrementally but the shadows in his normally-bright, clear eyes remained stagnant. He’d seen the exact look countless times, in the haunted, unseeing gaze of some of his childhood friends after returning from the front lines, in his own sons’ too-young eyes upon returning from Hell, in the barely-there visage of his dead wife's tormented stare, in the mirror too many times to count. When he’d been younger and prideful, he’d thought it was the look of a warrior; now he knew it better as the look of an innocent thing that’s been smothered by cruelty. 

“Where are you comin’ from, exactly?” 

Bobby prodded gently, watching as the words slowly sank in, and Cas adopted the look of a caged animal as memories came flooding back. If he didn’t know the angel better, he wouldn’t have been surprised if a tear slipped down the weary slope of his cheek in that way that’s completely out of your control, when your body has had enough fighting and it’s no longer listening to the host. As is, Bobby suspects that the minute trembling in Cas’s hands is his human equivalent to ugly, open-mouthed bawling and so he averts his gaze from them in an attempt to give him some privacy. 

“There’s a place that angels go after we-when I- it’s called The Empty. And it’s… it’s not like here. Just pitch darkness and freezing cold. Nothing to grasp unto, to ground you to any sort of reality. It’s closest human equivalent that I can compare it to is sleep, I guess, but it’s… more like an endless sleep if you  _ knew  _ you were asleep and that there was never going to be a next day where you wake up. A sleep with all of your senses robbed from you...with no end in sight.” 

Castiel swallowed several times, adam's apple bobbing as if the words themselves were choking him. His now cold and bitter tea remained forgotten on the tabletop, the rim partially concealing a carving Dean had etched into its weathered surface when he was all but nine years old. It’s astonishing, Bobby’s suddenly struck by the thought, that somehow Cas has managed to touch a piece left behind by his oldest son even  _ here.  _

“At least in Hell, in Purgatory, there is pain.” He finishes lamely, voice sounding as fractured and small as he must feel in this moment. His shoulders hunch inwards, like he can crush the sudden unbidden emotions inside of his ribcage and it's a habit he must’ve inherited from watching Dean and Sam’s attempts to do exactly that. Bobby’s helpless to do what he’s always done in the face of any of his children in pain. Wordlessly, he reaches out and gives the closest, trembling hand he can reach a firm squeeze, fondness and sorrow tearing into him as Castiel glances up at him in shock. He’d neglected this one during their time on Earth, he can tell now, and he’s shot through his dizzying relief that he’s been given the opportunity to do right by the kid this time around. 

“Well, you’re  _ here  _ now.” He says simply. And finally the body gave up its fight, and Bobby was proud of Castiel for letting it win, just this once. 

* * *

  
Bobby’s not sure how many hours pass in between Castiel’s tears, his quiet explanation of how he ended up in The Empty in the first place, and Bobby not saying a goddamned word. Those tears have been welling up inside of the kid for decades, centuries even, and Bobby won’t let Heaven or Hell (and so on) interrupt him for anything. Once it seems as though Cas has bled himself out unto his cabin floor and all of the energy has been sapped from his very bones, they both finally take notice that the sunlight has slowly dimmed into night, and Bobby finds himself urging Castiel to finally take that goddamned nap. 

To say the rules of Heaven are fast and loose is a gross understatement, and so Bobby isn’t quite sure where exactly he’s leading the angel to until his footsteps suddenly halt in front of a familiar looking door at the end of the hallway. As his gaze flickers over the red-chipped paint and the curvature of the hand-carved lettering, his palms are suddenly heavy with the weight of his best carving knife. Closing his eyes, the echo of a soft gasp and the memory of wide, green eyes rounding out freeze him in time. 

“This room…” There's a reverence in Cas's voice as though Bobby’s presenting him with The Holy Grail or the Lost Library of Alexandria instead of a long-abandoned childhood bedroom. One of his palms reaches out and traces the edge of a fire truck sticker that’s so wrinkled and faded with age that it’s little more than a blob of white with his fingertip, and he sees an eager but uncertain Dean Winchester pressing it into place like he’s afraid Bobby’s going to scold him for such a small, insignificant action. 

“I’ve never had a room that’s all for me. Sammy’s room is close too, right?” 

He swings the door open, not trusting his ability to speak, and gestures Cas inside with a weak wave of his arm. The protesting creaks of the twin bed surprise Bobby enough that he jolts a bit; unused to every mattress not being cloud-fluffy memory foam. Castiel’s entire body dips the bed, unable to take the strain of a fully-grown man, and Bobby feels kind of pissed that Heaven seemed to think an angel who’d been to Worse-Than-Hell and back ought to sleep in a shoddily made kid’s bed. His face was ducked, emotions hidden from Bobby’s nervous gaze, and long, calloused fingers worried the pilling navy duvet fabric between thumb and fore-finger gingerly. He’s only able to get the first letter of an apology out before Cas is whipping his head up and pinning Bobby with an open-mouthed, toothy smile that cracks the pained look on his face wide open. The pure, beaming joy pulses with such innocence and sincerity that Bobby no longer feels self-conscious about silently referring to this ancient warrior as “kid” anymore. 

“He must have been so excited.” 

Cas’s eyes are sparkling, gleaming with that otherworldly intensity that manages to be off-putting and endearing all at once. The smile seems to be stuck to his face as his hands reach for a battered-looking tiger plushie that’d clearly seen better days. Bobby’s mortified when he feels the backs of his eyes growing hot watching Castiel stroke the little, matted white tufts of the tiger’s jowls in the same way Dean used to whenever Bobby would tell him embellished hunting stories before bed. Again, Castiel manages to make the act of petting a crusty tiger stuffed animal into something worshipful and reverent, touch so careful and slow that Bobby feels a pang in his chest.  _ ‘Wish you’d figured out you were made for my son before your time was up, kid.’  _ That kind of care, ginger and patient, that would’ve been good for Dean. Castiel was good for Dean. But, evidently, not good enough.

“G’night, Cas.” He said instead of the 1000 and one things he wanted to say to this impossible, confusing creature, most of which started with the words ‘thank’ and ‘you’. 

“Yes, goodnight, Bobby Singer.” Cas’s voice was low and soft as he flopped unto his side, knees folding in towards his stomach, and still fully dressed. It looked the furthest thing from comfortable and yet, peace flooded the angel’s face for the first time since he’d appeared in Bobby’s dining room. 


	2. Thy Kingdom Come

The floorboards creaked beneath his slippered feet, a conveniently placed sliver of moonlight illuminating the easiest path to the dining room for him. A smudge of red snags his eye on his way towards his own bedroom and halts him in place. Cas’s mug sits innocuous right where the angel left it, which would obviously not be odd on Earth, but in Heaven, reality tends not to like leaving messes. Probably something to do with inconveniencing the human host or perhaps one of the angels had received a memo that dish-washing wasn’t a favorite activity amongst the masses. 

Regardless, that mug should  _ not  _ be there, and the mouthful of cold tea swirled through with dregs definitely shouldn’t be. Heaven doesn’t  _ do  _ dregs, and tea should never get cold. He’s a little surprised to find his fingers shaking a little as he plucks the mug up and moves cautiously over to the kitchen sink. He waits for the chipped ceramic to evaporate in his grasp, maybe poof with dramatic flair like in cartoons, but nothing happens as he carefully turns the faucet on. A part of him is relieved when the steady stream of water burbles out; half expecting for none of the kitchen’s facilities to actually work, like he was living in some sort of model home. The thought makes him shiver, gut twisted uncomfortably. He pushes all of those thoughts to the back, and focuses on rinsing out Gramama Dorothea’s mug, and lets the water run a hair too hot so that he can relish in the burn. 

* * *

Castiel shuffles out of his room looking like the receipts you leave forgotten at the bottom of your bag, hair even more disheveled and clothing impossibly-more wrinkled than he usually looks. But the discoloration beneath his eyes is less stark in the early-afternoon sunlight, and his eyes aren’t burdened by those same shadows. As he slumps into the same wooden chair he’d seated himself last night, Bobby hands him the chipped, red mug. Their eyes meet, wordlessly, and after a heartbeat, Cas accepts the coffee graciously. 

The dining room is filled with contented quiet, no noise but the soft sips and the occasional song bird outside that makes Bobby feel a little subconscious. Is he really  _ that  _ much of a textbook old fart? Cas seems to be enjoying it, however, so he lets it be for now. Finally, when they’re both around halfway through with their respective brews, Cas breaks the silence with a polite little clearing of his throat. 

“This mug, is it the same one from yesterday?”

Bobby nods slowly, unsure just  _ how  _ Castiel can tell, but he figures Cas spent a great deal more time in Heaven than he has so these things must just be instinctual. Cas’s lips press together in a thin, pale line and he states the obvious bluntly: 

“It shouldn't still be here.” 

Again all Bobby can do is agree helplessly, an uneasiness rising in him as a knot slowly forms in between the kid’s eyebrows. Bobby mourns the brief look of peace that had settled on Cas’s face, wanting it back more than anything, and watching as Cas’s eyes fall to the gleaming tabletop looking shattered. A wry little smile twists ugly in the corner of his mouth, and it reminds him of a young, teenaged Sam something fierce. 

“It seems I am breaking your Heaven, Bobby Singer. I apologize; it appears that I am still unwelcome here.” 

The words are softly-spoken, cracking at the end of his sentence, and the corners of blue eyes crease with a wince of pain. Long fingers trace patterns into the side of the rapidly-cooling mug, combating nerves the longer that Bobby sits there watching him. Eventually, Bobby leans back in his chair, takes a swig of black coffee, and quirks a very unimpressed eyebrow.

“Well, those winged sonsabitches don’t speak for me, and if they come knockin’ on that door, I can always magic up a sawed off.” 

Cas smiles, startled and looking touched by the fierce, protective glow in Bobby’s eyes. Bobby won’t allow another thank you to slip from the kid’s lips, already yanking himself out of his seat in search of his toolbox 

Over his shoulder, he tosses a question about how much the kid knows about cars. Cas’s face is serious but there’s a warmth in his voice as he informs Bobby that he doesn’t know very much, but he’d like to learn. 

* * *

  
The sun soaks into his skin, the occasional cool breeze keeping the summer day from feeling overbearing as he lays beneath one of the many old junkers in the Salvage Yard, and gruffly asks Castiel for various tools. The kid is a quick study, and he barely has to hesitate now before selecting the correct tool from the heavy metal toolbox tucked in between his feet. There’s still a half-second of uncertainty though, that’s different from the many times he’d done this with Dean. 

Bobby can’t help but think about the kid every time he finds himself walking into the old salvage yard, rather than the park, or the beachside, or into Harvelle’s. As he closes his eyes, he can nearly hear an impatient whine, always questioning “why can’t Bobby let  _ Dean  _ do it for once??”. Grinning, he remembers the first day he’d turned and taken the toolbox out of Dean’s hands. Dean’d probably been a little shy of 20 at the time, green eyes wide and a slack-mouthed grin of disbelief on his face. 

“Wait, really?” 

“Well, unless you really mess ‘er up, but let’s just see for today, huh boy?” 

His ears-no longer plagued by the fogginess of age, and my was it strange to not have to tilt his head so folks could get his ‘good ear’- picked up the sound of scuffed shoes kicking up gravel as Castiel moved closer to the rusted 2005 Saturn vue. Lying underneath as he was, Bobby couldn’t see whatever the angel was doing, but he pictured curious fingers tracing the faded silver paint with a barely there touch, deep in thought like Castiel seemingly always was. 

“Dean used to like this, working on the cars in the Salvage Yard. I...I did this for him, too, once. Not in the yard…at the bunker, with...with Baby. He wouldn’t speak to me-we were frequently in disagreements at the time- but he allowed me to...to help. Similarly to now, he would ask me for tools, but I didn’t have the faintest clue what dignified an...allen from a phillip screwdriver. I found myself just guessing, and even though I’m sure I was often wrong, he never corrected me. He just put the incorrect tool back, held out his palm, and waited for me to fail him again. But he never yelled; never grew frustrated with me. I guess he’d grown used to me coming up short with him.”

Bobby had grown still at the first utterance of Dean’s name, feeling the acute agony in which the angel held his child’s name in his mouth, and his hands stopped fiddling in favor of listening as the memory gushed forth from Castiel like a broken dam, like a 40 day flood. By the time Castiel was halfway through, Bobby found his legs scooting himself out from underneath the car, heels digging in to gain purchase in the tiny, sunbleached rocks. 

As he stood, eyes squinting in the suddenly-harsh sunlight, he took in Castiel’s hunched form. His blue eyes were lowered and cast off somewhere to the left, unseeing, and he helf one palm clasped tightly to his own bicep in a defensive hold, like the little owl Daniel had once hauled in that’d broken its little wing. He remembered how feeble the ugly little thing had looked, trembling and covered nearly completely with snow. He remembers how they’d been unable to warm it, in spite of the blankets they’d piled into the little box Karen had managed to scrounge up, placed in front of the fireplace. How they had woken up the next morning to find the creature had already passed. 

“Yeah, that sounds like Dean.” Bobby said quietly, fighting his body’s instincts to jolt as otherworldly blue eyes flickered to his, something searching in them. “That boy...heart of gold, but he could be a mean sonovabitch when he couldn’t find the right words to say something.” 

The two stood for a good, long while, Castiel’s throat bobbing around questions he couldn’t bear to ask. Bobby let him have his moment, lord knows he should’ve done that more with John’s boys, and once it seems as though Cas might just sink too far down into his own memories, he clears his throat and scratches fingers casually through his beard.

“‘Bout to rustle up some grub for lunch; always welcome to join me boy. This place might be full a’ winged bastards and some real ass backwards rules, but your brothers happen to make up a mean sandwich.” 

“In a moment.” Castiel murmurs, moving towards the little wooden fence that looks splintered to hell and perching on it carefully so his face is bathed in the white gold of the sun. With a nod, Bobby leaves him to it. 

* * *

  
  
It was a few days later when Castiel finally gathered the courage to bring up the elephant in the room. The two men were sat side by side, fishing in the river that had cut through the property of Bobby’s childhood home. A sweating cooler of beers sat at their feet and Cas tipped his face up so a gentle breeze could caress his skin with a contented little sigh. When he opened his eyes, though, and gazes straight into the clear blue, he was suddenly shot through with pain. This place, it bore a striking resemblance to the dock Dean fished on in his dreams. When he squeezed his eyes back shut, he imagined he could almost feel the brush of his warm, heavy shoulder against his own as Dean drew back to cast his line. The smell of clean sweat, the leather interior of the impala, and cheap dollar store soap filled Castiel’s nose for a brief moment, a rough voice cursing lowly as Dean-again- cast his line too low, blaming it on the alcohol even though they’d only just cracked their second ones open- 

He slammed the doors shut on his memories, forcing himself to push it all away to the very back of his mind. No, he couldn’t afford to think about him, not now. As he forced his gaze to focus on the side of Bobby’s face, slightly bored and at peace, he brought himself back into the present. Castiel wasn’t on Earth, and he wasn’t  _ here _ . 

“There’s no one else here.” 

Bobby didn’t startle at Castiel’s first utterance in over an hour, nor did he look as surprised nor confused by the observation as Cas had expected him to be. With the tiniest of shrugs, Bobby continued reeling his fishing line back in, not once taking his eyes of the bobbing of his lure on the water’s surface. 

“Yeah, well, believe it or not, I’m also pretty new to the scene.”

Cas looked at Bobby with a furrowed ‘brow and eyes slightly widened with alarm. Mentally, he was calculating how long he’d been...yes, he’d been mistakenly taken to Hell first, because Crowley was an ass. But, even so, Bobby's been in Heaven for several years now. And time worked differently in Heaven, sure, but not  _ that  _ different. 

“ I started out here, and I...I could see, there were...my family was here. But then I...I had to go spring my sons outta here, and lemme tell you boy, yer brothers weren’t too pleased with me then. All a’ sudden my time serving in Heaven weren’t too dissimilar to my time in Hell, if ya’ know what I mean?” 

Bobby was chuckling but Castiel’s body language was rigid, eyes dark and storming with a look that spoke of danger even if they weren’t glowing: “They imprisoned you. For helping the Winchesters? They’re your  _ family,  _ and no humans should ever be in Heaven’s chambers.” 

“Winchesters-and Winchester adjacent- get special treatment.” Bobby’s voice was flat and toneless, eyes still refusing to shift away from the gentle push-pull of the river. Now his grip on his fishing rod was loose, barely there, as if he’d forgotten what they were doing entirely. 

“How did you escape?” 

“Beats me.” With this, Bobby  _ finally  _ turned his head to look at Cas, “Happened sorta recently. Time...it’s funny here, so it’s not like I could give ya an exact date, but...recently, I just...woke up back in the cabin instead of the cell floor with no explanation.”

Cas turned his head away, so Bobby could only see the back of his dark, ruffled head of hair. His voice broke as he uttered a single word: “Jack.” 

“Pardon?” 

“H-He’s...he must’ve won. They must’ve won.” A smile fought its way unto Castiel’s face, and it was a wane, trembling thing, “He’s still new at..at being God, but that must’ve been him. I…”

His head whipped up, eyes wide and mouth open slightly, and when he stood, Bobby was worried the angel might just topple into the river. Bobby hurried up out of his comfortable lawn chair, scooping up his cooler (even though it’s not like it would matter had they left it), and stared at Cas with clear questions written all over his face. 

“Cas!”

Blue eyes snapped to his, and he froze in place. 

“Who in the goddamn is Jack?!” 


End file.
